TN: Holiday wines

K

Ken Schramm

Ken Schramm
With a dinner of beer can chicken (spice bend under the skin), garlic smashed potatoes with spinach, brussels sprouts with mushrooms in white wine sauce, and baguettes. Simple fare, but it was what they wanted, and in 35 years of trying, I have yet to figure out how to do a moister chicken breast.

'08 JP Brun Morgon: Delicious, completely in balance, extraordinarily fragrant with lots of tart cherry and floral (carnation?) notes. Compelling match with the meal. After a couple of days on the counter, the last glass was spouting massive butterscotch/diacetyl, and I was very sad I let it go the extra day. Time to move on these, I think - this will be my "go to" Beaujolais until the rest are gone.

'09 Michel Delhommeau Muscadet Cuvee St Vincent: Very attractive wine, vied for attention with the JPB quite respectably at dinner. Crisp citrus and acacia blossom aromatics, great acidity, and reasonably lengthy finish. Next bottle I'll find out how well it will show next to a Pepiere, but flying solo it complemented the food very well. Still steely and fresh two days later.

'09 Chateau Fontaine Gewürtztraminer: Decidedly the best wine in their stable - sweeter than I might prefer with the fare, but typistic expression of the variety without any ostensible failings. Lots of tropical fruit and diesel fuel - very primary. Plenty of grip. This will surely be the better for it with another 4 years of cellaring. Very respectable showing for a Michigan white.

Thanks to a tip from Geo T, I found an '01 Edmunds St John Syrah on a shelf in town. What a pleasant surprise. Perhaps I can coax George over with a few less pedestrian offerings. Last time he and Kim were by, we cracked an '05 Bourdy Rouge after we picked a few bushels of apples. I have to side with those who did not write that wine off. We rather liked it.

Happy Holidays,
The Mead Guy
 
Yeah, we opened a couple of bottles of The Heart of Darkness. Others had it with dinner, but I had it with my basic NY cheesecake, and it was terrific. The second release is out now. It's sweet, too, but if you're an unblemished fruit and massive acidity lover, it's right in the wheelhouse. Still way spendy. That was the only way to make it worth my time for a release of only 140 bottles. It got some nice ink courtesy of Timothy O'Neal in the last issue of Sommelier Journal.

Odd that the spell checker here doesn't know "sommelier."

There's some really fun stuff coming on the mead making front, but first the partners and I have to get past the lawyer stages, and that part just seems like dentistry without novocaine.
 
originally posted by Ken Schramm:
TN: Holiday winesWith a dinner of beer can chicken (spice bend under the skin), garlic smashed potatoes with spinach, brussels sprouts with mushrooms in white wine sauce, and baguettes. Simple fare, but it was what they wanted, and in 35 years of trying, I have yet to figure out how to do a moister chicken breast.
Click to expand...

i haven't tried the beer can method yet but am on a constant quest for the perfectly roasted chicken. i have tried most every method but read something interesting the other day about roasting poultry that might explain why this method works so well.

it was suggested in a newly purchased cookbook that it is essential to truss a whole bird before roasting in order to seal off the cavity and keep the breast meat from cooking from the inside and the outside thereby drying out the meat. it also suggested stuffing a lemon in the bird (not a novel idea) to further seal the cavity not for added flavor. the beer can method would accomplish this well i imagine. so , it's possible its not the beer in the can that moistens the breast meat but the effective sealing of the birds cavity that keeps the meat moist.

my first try at trussing and stuffing a guinea hens cavity with citrus produced great results.

just a thought.
 
That would make perfect sense, Bill, as I have yet to actually taste big infuence from the beer in the chicken or see enough of a reduction in the volume of liquid in the can after cooking to account for the juiciness. I don't use beer all the time, as I don't see much of a match in hop bitterness with chicken flesh. German wheat beers and Belgian Wits work pretty well, and I've also liked white wine and mead.

If you haven't tried it yet, give it a whirl. The smokiness from the fire is a great touch, and the rub under the skin is delightful. Somewhat stagey, but it's much easier to separate the skin without breaking it and get the rub down into the thighs and legs before the chicken is on the stand. Then fill the can, add some spices to the liquid, spice the inside of the breasts and outside of the skin, and onto the fire. I use a meat thermometer to judge when it's done, and have yet to swing and miss with this method.
 
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